How Real is Eco-Anxiety?
Being eco-sensitive ain’t easy. But is it unhealthy? Here in this post are some reasons for eco-anxiety and the 9 best sanity savers for eco-passionate people that I know of for reducing the potentially destructive stress of being so marvelously eco-passionate!
What is Eco-Anxiety?
Eco-anxiety is the emotional distress associated with a heightened awareness of widespread ecological degradation, the disasterous effects of rapid climate change and the lack of decisive, responsive action by governments and others to acknowledge and address these problems. It was defined in 2017 in a report by the American Psychological Association as “a chronic fear of environmental doom”.
Eco-Anxiety is not only normal, it is a healthy response to the global crises we’re facing. That is, until it becomes disabling.
If eco-anxiety is treated as a pathology, ‘then the forces of denial will have won! … What we are witnessing isn’t a tsunami of mental illness, but a long-overdue outbreak of sanity’.
Graham Lawton (2019) from the New Scientist
Is Eco-Anxiety Unhealthy?
I mean, how much time and energy can one person realistically spend worrying about inevitable climate catastrophes and irreversible ecological damage? We’re convinced that we can never do enough, and yet we can also lose sight of when the burden becomes too much.
When raising ecological and climate awareness is one of the most urgent and important tasks of our time, how can we not be concerned about it round the clock?
Let’s not kid ourselves. Awareness-raising around this topic can be a super stressful, thankless task. Sometimes you’re “rewarded” with hostility, aggression, even raging outbursts. It can back-fire and make the same problem we were just trying to solve even worse. At its worst, the day-to-day stress of campaigning for the future can become debilitatingly depressing. And this intense stress will ultimately have a hugely negative impact on our health, if we’re not careful!
A normal feeling, without a name
For a long time, this feeling of dread and despair that is now known as ‘eco-anxiety’, ‘climate anxiety’ or ‘solastaglia‘ had no proper name. Years ago, people would call this awful, heavy, dismal mood that has plagued so many environmentalists the “doom and gloom syndrome.” I can remember feeling it and not knowing what else to call it. I was about 25 then.
I can also remember how the same people who dismissed warnings of a climate emergency would also distance themselves from anyone who took the warnings seriously. Over the past 30 years, I’ve come to understand better why they did this. I’ll come back to this later.
And then came Glenn
In March 2017, just a month before the publication of the DrawDown Project‘s landmark study of large-scale climate solutions, the American Psychological Association (APA) released another landmark report called Mental Health and Our Changing Climate. This report explains in great detail the impact of climate change on our mental health. Its authors give credit to Glenn A. Albrecht, an Australian environmental researcher and philosopher, and others for coining the term “eco-anxiety“.
How Real is Eco-Anxiety?
No longer so far away
For those of us living in areas of the world where nothing major has yet happened, we can only imagine what it must be like for others. Our climate crisis may still feel like a “far away” problem. This is changing quickly.
Just in the past 3-5 years, because extreme weather events have become so outrageously unpredictable, and major disasters have been getting more and more frequent, more people are beginning to get shaken out of their denial. Because climate change itself is becoming more real to them, more peope are becoming more concerned. Of all age groups, those under 25 seem to be the most affected by eco-anxiety.
What ten thousand young voices say
Out of the ten thousand young people ages 16 to 25 asked in a recent survey published in the journal Nature, 95% say they are worried about the future and the destructive effects of climate change. The study included voices from ten different countries, from poor to wealthy. Almost 60% across all countries are either very worried or extremely worried about their future and that of future generations. Only 5% say they are not worried. Judging by this survey, which is the largest of its kind so far, the majority of young people are clearly taking things quite seriously.
Is All Eco-Anxiety the Same?
Well, let’s just say there’s anxiety, and then there’s anxiety. Clinical psychologists make a clear distinction between clinical and non-clinical anxiety. Non-clinical anxiety is the kind that does not require any kind of treatment or therapy. Clinical anxiety is when a person can no longer function normally in their every day life without some kind of therapy and support. England’s National Health Service (NHS) defines general anxiety disorder (GAD) as “a long-term condition that causes you to feel anxious about a wide range of situations and issues, rather than 1 specific event.”
People feel anxious about all sorts of things
We all feel anxious sometimes. Usually, it’s when we feel there is just cause for worrying. We worry about not passing a test, or getting a positive test result. Some of us worry about a cat that hasn’t come home at the usual time, or a child, or a spouse, or a parent. I know that when I worry about someone, I check into it, partly because I want to be there if I’m needed, and partly to ease my own mind.
Worrying about the effects of climate change does not qualify as unwarranted worry. Not worrying enough about the effects of climate change has clearly been the bigger problem.
When we feel threatened
If you think about it, feeling anxious about a perceived threat of harm is not something you would go to see a doctor about. If it was an immediate threat, you would probably call the police. Since it’s not just one person or even just one small group of people who are threatened by the dangers that result from climate change, and we don’t know when or where something will happen, we have no obvious form of protection. That said, you should definitely check with your doctor, if you feel the need.
When we feel our own health and safety, or the health and safety of others is threatened, then the normal reponse is to act. Our climate crisis poses a threat to all humans and many other living things. But when we are unable to find a way to act on the problem, we worry and feel anxious. It’s as simple as that.
Support is available in many forms
Even if there’s no present need for alarm concerning your own personal mental health, difficult emotions are still difficult. There are a number of other sources of support, and I plan to give you as much information on that as I can.
Direct Impacts and PTSD
For those who’ve already been directly impacted by ecological and climate disasters, things have gone far beyond “constant worry.” For indigenous peoples living close to the arctic circle, namely the Inuit (in Canada and Alaska) and the Sami (in the far north of Europe and Asia), the challenges are greater than ever. They are faced with the challenge to survive culturally and spiritually, in a place where the sea ice and permafrost that support their way of life are disappearing. Their very identity lies in that connection to the places they call home. The sense of loss is hard to fathom.
This goes also for the hundreds of millions of people on all continents so far affected by flash floods or wildfires, more intense and frequent hurricanes and tornadoes and ever more extreme heat waves and cold, or those living in low-lying coastal areas being displaced due to rising sea levels.
For all these people, the situation has way gone way beyond mere anxiety. They are losing their homes, their communities and their identities.
Post-disaster aftermath
After experiencing a climate distaster, people suffering from the loss of their home, their land and their community. As a result, they lose their sense of identity, security and purpose. Of course, tragedies happen all over the world, always have and always will. Trauma is trauma.
I have no doubt, humans as a whole can and will be strong and resilient! But, when under extreme stress, we can also become very fragile. For most of us, our strength lies in our community. And, as we know, climate tragedies and traumas are just getting started.
What Does It Mean to Be Indirectly Affected?
For those of us watching these extreme events from a distance as they unfold, it’s hard to bear. It’s also completely normal to feel powerless and to fear for the welfare of the victims. The effect of this concern is increased eco-anxiety. Normal, natural and even healthy–until it’s just too much!
What else causes eco-anxiety?
Headlines & product lines
These days you would have to live under a rock if you didn’t want to hear a word spoken about climate change. “Going green” to protect nature and all the “climate neutral” slogans on products abound out there on the market. But, what do you say to your child when they ask you what “climate-friendly” means?
Even if you haven’t yet been directly impacted or know anyone personally who has, you can still sense changes in the ways people talk, shop and behave. It’s not all positive either. I know more than a handful of people who, at the mere mention of climate and environmental crises, they start to joke about it, or mock the “eco-freaks.” Sometimes, they may even get angry about it.
How Do I know Whether I Have Eco-Anxiety?
Eco-Anxiety, or “the chronic worry over environmental doom,” is likely to happen only to people who (a) take the situation seriously and (b) have the fortitude to confront it as a matter of fact. You may have noticed, this is not the case for all people.
Levels of Eco-Anxiety
For people who’ve experienced trauma, anxiety is understandable and normal. For people who perceive a specific threat, anxiety is also understandable and normal. The US Deparment of Health and Human Services explains the five kinds of clinical anxiety. If you do not see yourself in any of these descriptions, then your eco-anxiety is probably quite manageble.
Nonetheless, as relieving as it may be that you are not on the verge of a nervous breakdown, it is still a good idea to keep a close eye on your own health.
If you are concerned about your level of eco-anxiety or that of a loved one, you may want to check this scale and, if you feel you may be in the red zone, I encourage you to speak to a health professional about managing any potential stress-related symptoms. I myself have suffered from a range of stress-related symptoms from mysterious allergic reactions to various food intolerences. So I can tell you, I really have been there!
Eco-Anxiety Self-Assessment Tool
MILD ECO-ANXIETY (YELLOW ZONE)
If you feel you are in the yellow zone, how many of the following characteristics would describe you? You:
- choose mindfully to consume as little as possible.
- feel it is your duty to use as little as possible, especially water, fuel and electricity.
- do your best not waste anything, especially food.
- avoid using fossil fuel-powered transport, electricity and heating, as much as possible.
- pay attention to environmental news and the weather
- keep track of governmental and industry measures to reduce emissions and pollution and mitigate environmental degradation.
- often feel uncertain about the future and whether we can still get ahead of the climate crisis.
- feel discouraged or concerned when you see or hear others behaving dismissively
MID-LEVEL ECO-ANXIETY (ORANGE ZONE)
And if you feel you are in the orange zone? That means, all the characteristics of mild eco-anxiety, plus you:
- are well informed of the science of climate change and the growing problems.
- worry often about future generations, food security and social unrest.
- feel wary of the increasingly unpredictable extreme weather events that are becoming more frequent and intense.
- feel anxious about things getting worse sooner than predicted.
- turn down invitations to celebrations or other events that are not organized to be ecologically-mindful and zero-waste.
- actively try to encourage the senders to plan future events more responsibly.
- prefer not to socialize with people who do not live as eco-consciously as you do.
- dream of being able to live amongst like-minded humans.
- may be engaged in one or more actions designed to educate about or advocate eliminating waste, reducing unnecessary consumption, and bring down emissions.
- spend a lot of time reading and talking about the effects of climate change and the possible solutions.
SEVERE ECO-ANXIETY (RED ZONE)
And if you feel you are in the red zone? That means, all the characteristics of mid-level eco-anxiety, plus you:
- never stop thinking about our climate emergency and feel permantly distracted by it.
- regularly imagine worst case scenarios and your constant worries interfere with your abilty to concentrate or function normally.
- reject invitations to celebrations that are not ecologically-mindful and zero-waste.
- openly express your anger toward the senders for not being more responsible.
- cannot bear to socialize with anyone who does not live as eco-consciously as you do.
- prefer to live amongst your tribe, even if it means moving cross-country or abroad.
- feel angry towards or alienated by family because of their behaviour and attitude related to climate and environmental responsibility.
- have lost friends or ended relationships due to differences in views on climate and environment.
Are There Other Forms of Eco-Anxiety?
Sure there are. Other forms of climate- or eco-anxiety may be much less obvious but I would argue that they may also be more serious. These include eco-denial, eco-guilt, eco-anger, eco-grief, eco-fatigue, eco-exhaustion, eco-burnout and eco-apathy. If you notice a pattern similar to what happens in other trauma scenarios, you’d be right. Why more serious? Because denial of a problem eats away at us on the inside. It’s subconscious stress.
It’s well known that both chronic stress and any kind of traumatic experience can be harmful to your health, especially when compounded. When stress is compounded, or just too much for too long, the nervous system starts to overload. This can cause a whole range of physical and other symptoms can begin to appear, such as a weakened immune system and uncharacteristic behavior.
No longer exclusive to nature lovers
Experiencing eco-anxiety is no longer limited to environmental activists. These days, virtually everyone is affected. Unless they really have been living under a rock, each and every human over the age of five, if not younger, has seen and heard news of our climate emergency. Practically everyone alive is reacting to it in one way or another, whether consciously or subconsciously. We all need to take care of our health in order to be able to respond appropriately to any given situation.
For those of us engaged in actively seeking solutions, it may help us to know that even the people who seem oblivious are still aware of our climate and environmental crises on some level.
What About the People Who Don’t Give a Damn?
You may or may not agree, but I am convinced that people who deny climate change are struggling with it as much as anyone. If you want to reach them, don’t try to make them understand you. Instead, try first to understand them. Here are some ways to do that in my post “11 Ways to Inspire People to Live More Sustainably.”
An eye-opening moment
As a case in point, I went to visit a girlfriend in Berlin in 2018. It was summer and there was a big extinction rebellion protest getting started alongside a “climate camp” for anyone who wanted more outreach training. Old hat for me–my first climate actions took place over 20 years earlier. However, before I could speak half a sentence about the event, she stopped me. With her jaw clenched, she said she wanted no part of it, that it made her feel “aggressive” just hearing about all this “climate-bullshit”.
My friend was obviously less relaxed about things than I thought. We’d hardly ever talked about environmental activism before that, but she knew it was part of my life. Once the initial shock subsided, I started to understand her reaction. She really wasn’t as dismissive as I’d thought. She was simply feeling powerless. So powerless that she had to block it out and keep her head firmly in the sand just to be able to stay functional in her daily life. I had thought of her as a strong person before that. But, I’d apparently underestimated the impact that our climate situtation was having on her emotionally.
…lead me to a new approach
And so I learned to be even more careful about approaching that subject with her. Likewise, when I meet anyone else who seems unable to face the facts of our climate crisis. I reasoned with myself, that, if they’re just not able to handle the negative feelings (guilt, fear, anger), then how can it help to rub their noses in it? So, I began to develop other tactics. More will come, but for now, my post “11 Ways to Inspire People to Live More Sustainably” covers some of the basics.
Is Eco-Anxiety Becoming an Epidemic?
So far, it still seems to be a game of wait-and-see for most of the world’s national governments. Yes, government and industry leaders are doing some, but many feel that the overall effort is far too little and far too slow. The latest climate conference in Glasgow, COP26, showed that there is still reluctance on the part of some countries even to let go of coal-fired power plants.
Of course, the consequences of this additional delay will be… yep, you guessed it: even more uncertainty and feelings of insecurity and fear. In a very real way, our mental health is also at stake in this crisis.
Who can blame us for feeling this way?
None of us knows exactly what to expect when it comes to the climate changing. But, by now, we’ve all experienced, witnessed or heard about enough outrageously unsual and unpredictable extreme weather events, such as flash floods, fires, and freezes, heat waves, drought, hurricanes and ice storms. These, in additional to melting glaciers, permafrost and sea ice, are helping people to believe the climate scientists, at long last.
News for all to see and hear
Thanks to over 30 years of hard work by climate scientists, we know that the average global temperature will continue to rise, incrementally, another degree or two. We know that, even if we stop all emissions NOW, we are still going to see massive, lasting changes in weather patterns that will affect us all in many ways for a long time to come.
Some people continue to deny that it’s anthropogenic, claiming that the climate has always been changing. But now that we all have seen so many examples of the effects of rapid climate change, we listen more closely to the scientists who have been trying to tell us that the atmosphere is changing more rapidly than ever in the history of the planet. More and more people are finally realizing that this emergency was caused by us. This ‘great awakening’ is going to show us who’s resilient and who’s not.
Health professionals are responding
As prevalence of eco-anxiety continues to grow, a new area of psychology has emerged along with it, known as climate and environmental psychology. The American Psychological Association and the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations have been joined by professional associations the world over: “As the world faces crises without precedent, more than 60 national, regional and international psychological associations from every continent across the world have joined together and formed the Global Psychology Alliance (GPA). [The GPA] takes action to elevate psychological science to address global issues too big for one association to tackle alone.”
If the response of psychologists all over the globe is any indication, the need for climate-related mental health services is higher than ever. You could say, there’s never been a bigger or more real issue.
The Bottom Line
The question I ask myself is this (and I wonder how you would answer it):
How many people are truly emotionally prepared RIGHT NOW to handle the truth of our climate emergency?
The truth that we have been doing the unthinkable: that we are on the verge of making our planet uninhabitable for all future generations of human life and perhaps most other species as well. Being forced to face this truth without having a clue as to what the solutions could be to make a real difference in the end is potentially emotionally crushing. So, with that in mind…
BUILD RESILIENCE!
There are so many different ways that people react to the same potentially upsetting information. Each person has a different level of resilience. Resilience is what allows us to respond to a difficult experience or situation in a healthy way.
Resilience allows you to face a problem or challenge, overcome it, and get back to life a little bit stronger and a little bit wiser. It’s coping with adversity in ways that boost your own well-being and protects you from getting overwhelmed.”
JED Foundation
You have chosen not to ignore or block out the truth. You refuse to abandon all hope and choose instead to focus on solutions. That puts you, in my book, among the strongest, most resilient people alive today.
Summary
By now, you should realize that eco-anxiety is not only normal, it is necessary! There are many kinds of anxiety and many levels from zero to extreme. We feel threatened by the effects of climate change and we want to do something about it. Health professionals are organizing in response to the increased need for support. Help is available is you feel you need it! We need to take care of our health, including mental health, in order to be able to respond appropriately to our environmental and climate emergencies.
Additionally, many people who seem dismissive and reject your efforts to get them to “see” the problems, may not be emotionally prepared to acknowledge the truth and accept it. Give them room and discover strategies with me to get around their fears, without blaming, shaming or getting angry. There are ways to address this gently. More will come, but for now, please see my post on inspiring people to live more sustainably.
This wEBSITE WAS CREATED WITH A MISSION. That is to providE you with as much inspiration, encouragement, resources and support as is in my power to do so!
Conclusion
At this point, it’s no longer about raising awareness of the problems, it’s about raising awareness of:
- the solutions
- coping strategies
- strategies for adapting
- support systems
- resilience
Did you find this article helpful? Please leave a comment! I would be grateful for your feedback!
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